University of Virginia: You Can Help Put Julian Bond’s Papers In An Online Archive. “Civil rights icon Julian Bond fought for social justice and equality from the time he co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960 until his death in 2015. In between those years he served in the Georgia legislature, co-founded the Southern Poverty Law Center, served as chairman of the NAACP, engaged in political activism on various fronts – and taught more than 5,000 students as a University of Virginia professor. Now the University is embarking on a project to make his remarkable collection of documents accessible to the world through a crowdsourced transcription effort. #TranscribeBond is the first stage in the ultimate production of an online, digital edition.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Nature: Dutch publishing giant cuts off researchers in Germany and Sweden. “Elsevier last week stopped thousands of scientists in Germany from reading its recent journal articles, as a row escalates over the cost of a nationwide open-access agreement. The move comes just two weeks after researchers in Sweden lost access to the most recent Elsevier research papers, when negotiations on its contract broke down over the same issue.”

Dallas Observer: UNT Professor Will Attempt World’s Longest History Lesson. “In a moment of serendipity, Andrew Torget and his two young children found themselves scrolling though the fabled Guinness World Records. They began looking for low-hanging fruit in hopes of adding their names to the record book, a dream deferred from Torget’s childhood. While his children had as little luck as their father did at their age, Torget is planning on making yet another attempt at global glory. This time, his intentions go far beyond either fame or novelty.”

University of South Carolina: Parris Island Historical and Museum Society preserves historic film collection. “On Tuesday, July 17, 2018, Sgt. Major James Moore (Ret.) of the Parris Island Historical and Museum Society (PIHMS) Board of Directors, presented Bill Bethea, on behalf of University of South Carolina Libraries Moving Image Research Collections (MIRC), a check for $200,000 on stage at the Beaufort Water Festival. The generous contribution will fund two positions for two years at MIRC solely dedicated to digitizing the U.S. Marine Corps Film Repository, a collection of films shot by U.S. Marines throughout the 20th century.”

Christian Science Monitor: From Russia, with hashtags? How social bots dilute online speech. “If you search Twitter for the hashtag #FamiliesBelongTogether, a tag created by activists opposing the forcible separation of migrant children from their parents, you might be in for a pop proofreading quiz. That’s because, in some locations in the United States, the top trending term, the one that Twitter automatically predicts as you type it, contains a small typo, like #FamiliesBelongTogther.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Guardian: FamilyOFive: YouTube bans ‘pranksters’ after child abuse conviction. “YouTube has banned a family of vloggers from its platform, after the parents were convicted of child neglect in the course of filming their popular ‘prank’ videos. Michael and Heather Martin,who post videos under the name FamilyOFive, were , after viewers raised alarm over their treatment of their children in videos.”

Sophos: Venmo users: time to hide your drug deals and excessive pizza consumption. “If you owe someone a small sum of money, or just want to pay an odd amount without going to an ATM, you can do that using Venmo in a matter of seconds as long as the recipient is willing to join too. This convenience (coupled with its ownership by payments giant PayPal) has helped it attract seven million users who in 2017 shifted a reported $18 billion. Did we mention that transactions not involving a credit card are free? If this is starting to sound like an advert, it’s time to mention a quirk that some find a bit harder to swallow – transactions conducted through Venmo appear to be public by default.”

Arizona State University: News Co/Lab survey: People don’t consider local news ‘fake’. “A new national survey shows that although nearly one in five Americans immediately associate the word ‘news’ with the word ‘fake,’ only a tiny number use that word to describe local news.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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